


Adeste Fidelis

by Azzy



Category: Tintin - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:49:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzy/pseuds/Azzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first Christmas Tintin and the Captain spend at Marlinspike together is very different for them both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adeste Fidelis

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for [a prompt](http://tintin-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1701.html?thread=7333#cmt7333) over at the [Tintin Kink Meme](http://tintin-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1701.html) on Dreamwidth.

**Two Weeks to Christmas**

“A Christmas tree!” Tintin exclaims when he wanders in through the entrance hall one brisk December morning. “Nestor, where did it come from?”

“The grounds, sir. The tree for the Christmas festivities always comes from the grounds,” Nestor says, perhaps a little repressively. “Do mind the baubles, sir.”

Tintin hastily sidesteps the box of baubles in his path; they are delicate things of fine-blown glass, shimmering iridescent in the cold winter sun. He bends down to pick one up as Snowy peers over the edge of the box, ever-curious. “They're very beautiful,” Tintin says, impressed, holding it up to the light; this one is tinted red-gold. “May I -”

“Be my guest, sir.”

The tree is the biggest Tintin has ever seen; a real fir tree, with a hint of frost still melting from soft needles to the flagstone floor. He has never had a tree in his own flat, on the few occasions when he's managed to be there for Christmas at all; usually the holiday slips past unnoticed and unremarked (last Christmas, for example, a dictator and some highly politically unstable documents had come together with a diamond heist to make for a very distracting December. And Haddock hadn't seemed to care when Tintin remembered it afterwards, so he'd never given much thought to it). “I'll hang it right there,” he says, decided, and loops the bauble – with some difficulty; fir trees are so prickly! - over a branch at about the height of his head.

“Most fetching, sir,” says Nestor. Snowy, apparently by now convinced that the box contains no bones for his enjoyment, utters a wuff of agreement; looking at the lights dancing in the spun glass, Tintin smiles.

“Are there more boxes of decorations?”

“An attic full, sir.”

*

“What the blue blazes is a blasted tree doing in my hallway?” Haddock demands, a little later.

Tintin glances back over his shoulder; he's perched halfway up a stepladder, a string of shimmering tinsel in one hand. “Oh, hello, Captain,” he says amicably. “It's a Christmas tree.”

“I can see that,” Haddock says, and tries not to make it sound too sour. “And it'll shed needles everywhere, and fall over, and -”

“Captain, do you really think Nestor would let it shed needles everywhere?” Tintin loops the tinsel over one branch and cranes to reach another, just slightly too far to the right. “Oh, confound it – Captain, could you -”

He's got out of practice at saying no, that's the problem. Haddock finds himself taking the tinsel from Tintin and draping it over the branch in question, and then tucking the loose end around another, just to make it tidy; he glances up to find Tintin watching, a knowing glint in his eye.

The problem is that Christmas before has always been between him and a bottle, never a time to spread joy and peace or whatever else you were supposed to be doing. In the ten years before he met Tintin (it's odd how his life has rearranged itself into _before_ and _after_ ) he's spent only one Christmas on land. That was in a tavern in Plymouth, and not one of the better ones, nor yet one of the cleanest; he remembers best the surly defiance with which he drank until it was time to go to sea again.

And of course this Christmas will be different. He's just never put much thought to it before.

“Should we decorate the rest of the house?” Tintin is asking, a little doubtful. “I suppose Nestor will do most of it.”

“I am not decorating the whole house,” Haddock says forcefully, alarmed by the very idea and yet beseiged by the sinking feeling that this is a battle he is doomed to lose. “Blue blistering barnacles, Tintin, isn't one tree enough?”

 

 **One Week to Christmas**

“Holly,” Tintin announces, bursting in through the library doors a few days later in a whirlwind of snow and small excited dog. “Captain, I found a holly tree!”

Haddock relaxes fractionally; he's been on edge for a few days now. It's been two weeks since their last adventure, which usually indicates that it's about time for Tintin to go dragging everybody off on some kind of hairbrained scheme to the ends of the earth, so he's understandably nervous; but the lad seems to have found an acceptable substitute in their Christmas preparations. He has even, apparently, baked a cake. “A holly tree?” he demands. “Tintin -”

“We should have branches of holly,” Tintin declares. “All around the house. And ivy, and mistletoe. I read it in a book,” he adds, “about Christmas traditions.”

“Did you, now,” Haddock says resignedly, and adds without thinking, “and who're you planning to kiss under the mistletoe?”

Tintin turns a little pink, and crouches down to pet Snowy. “Nobody, of course,” he says. “It will only be you and - and me. Oh, and the Professor when he returns, I suppose. Perhaps, perhaps I - perhaps I should leave the mistletoe. Come on, Snowy, let's go and bring in the holly branches,” and he bolts for the door as if stung.

Haddock stares after him, and wonders if perhaps – but no; there are some things he knows he truly shouldn't contemplate for the good of his own sanity.

 

 **Two Days to Christmas**

Marlinspike Hall is beautifully decorated, at least in Tintin's estimation; perhaps a little less tasteful where he and the Captain have attempted to achieve different effects with no regard for the other (there are a few rather unfortunate colour clashes, for example, but really it adds to the charm of the whole thing), but undeniably thoroughly in the spirit of the season. The rest of the rooms have received similar attention, with holly and ivy strung from picture frames and candles that wink and glimmer from tinsel and glass. “Capital,” Tintin says with immense satisfaction. Snowy, who has already thoroughly inspected the tree and found it lacking in squirrels, sighs and leans against his leg; Tintin leans down to scratch his ear. “I believe I could rather like Christmas at Marlinspike.”

The Captain clears his throat. “You're staying, then?”

Tintin glances up at him. His friend is scowling, but it is the kind of scowl that means he's trying not to give something away, not the kind that means he's genuinely upset. “I'd like to stay, if the invitation is -”

“Thundering typhoons, lad, of course you're invited!” Haddock explodes. “If you want to come, that is. I'm no great hand at Christmas festivities, but I'd wager we can make it a holiday to remember, eh?”

“And of course I want to come,” Tintin returns. Haddock's face relaxes.

“We used to have Christmas crackers,” he says, “when I was a boy.”

“Then we must find some,” Tintin says firmly. He has read about all sorts of Christmas traditions in a book, and rather thinks that the best sort of Christmas will be to use as many as possible. “And we should make mulled wine.” Really, it is a bit like preparing for an adventure, waiting to see everything come together as perfectly as possible. He's never imagined that Christmas could be so much _fun_.

 

 **Christmas Eve**

They attend a Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, in the old village church that has stood there for so many untold years; it is cold, and candles flicker from gold and tarnished silver as their breath forms patterns of mist in the air, singing the old, old songs.

Haddock knows the songs only vaguely, because his parents were far from religious and he has never been to a Midnight Mass before; Tintin sings every song note- and word-perfect. Haddock thinks that his friend was probably brought up a good Catholic schoolboy before that quick mind would have become impatient with rituals and ancient song, eager for mysteries more tangible, more immediate, more challenging. “Who do you think the man in that painting is?” Tintin whispers to him as they sit down after the third carol, nodding to the wall to their right. “He looks a lot like you.”

“Some poor benighted relative, probably,” Haddock whispers back, and frowns at the strange feeling that sweeps through him; the painting does resemble him, right down to the thick black beard, although he has been depicted in a heroic pose complete with sword, horse and cowering enemy. Perhaps it is just strange to find something of himself so settled, so rooted in permanency although he knows intellectually that his ancestors would have sat in this very church. “Eh, Tintin, d'you really think he looks like -”

“Shh!” hisses an old lady from behind them, and Haddock subsides, abashed. Tintin catches his eye in silent mirth, the candlelight making the moment secretive and _theirs_.

Afterwards, when they stand to leave, the Professor is already talking about how the roof would have been built, walking into several people as he trips backwards while gazing at the ceiling. Tintin and Haddock usher him slowly but surely towards the doors, by which point he has made friends with the lady from the seat behind and is explaining his latest project in animated terms. “...and, dear lady, it will be an extravaganza! I do beg you to attend, it would be marvellous...”

The colder air hits like a bucketful of icy water as they step outside, and Tintin catches his eye, moving closer, reaching out; for one terrible moment Haddock thinks Tintin will reach for his hand – that is not what he wants, that is not what they _are_ , Tintin is not a child to be held by the hand – but Tintin merely tucks his hand into the crook of Haddock's elbow, linking their arms and strolling on down the church path.

The stars are bright and heavy in the winter sky, and when Tintin starts to sing again the first carol of the night, Haddock finds himself humming along.

 

 **Christmas Day**

It feels good, Tintin thinks, looking around the room. Calculus is industriously sleeping off the effects of a large Christmas dinner in a plush armchair, his wheezing snores a counterpart to the soft carols from the wireless; Snowy and the cat are occupying either ends of the rug in front of the fire in an uneasy truce, and the Captain is in his favourite chair, turning Tintin's present to him over and over in his hands. It's a little telescope, beautifully made, with gleaming brass fittings; Tintin's gift from the Captain was a leatherbound set of _Sherlock Holmes_ mysteries. His fingers itch just thinking about them.

“Well?” Haddock asks gruffly. “Does it measure up, Christmas at Marlinspike?”

“It's the best Christmas I've ever had,” Tintin says with utter truth, and the Captain's face softens; he sets aside his telescope and leans forward, elbows braced on his knees, big hands lightly clasped.

“I'll tell you what, Tintin,” he says; he looks so different, Tintin thinks, when he's in a rare pensive mood. Good different. “I haven't had a Christmas like this since I was a boy.”

“I'd say it's been a roaring success,” Tintin says, thinking of the roast dinner, the decorations, the carols and the gifts of the night before. He'd woken up that morning to find a stocking filled with sweet things hanging from the mantelpiece in his room, and no amount of cajoling would induce any of his friends to say where it had come from. “What were your Christmases like, Captain?”

“Oh,” says Haddock a little dismissively, “well, it was good enough until my father went and died – never enough for a tree, or roast dinners, but there was always something.” He clears his throat and adds, voice a little gruff, “I thought I'd lost that, y'see. But even then they were never so – never so _cosy_.”

Tintin's Christmases as a boy were dull, for the most part; he spent them dreaming of other places to be, of people he hadn't met yet. Half asleep, his life had felt like, populated by characters in shades of grey until he first boarded a train to Brussels – far, far away from the orphanage and the school where so much was expected and nothing was _done_ – and the world exploded into colours he'd never imagined could truly exist. “No,” he says, full of the realisation that here is no place he'd rather be, no people he'd rather meet again and again. “No, neither were mine.”

“It's no ship in the middle of the ocean,” the Captain says, and reaching out catches hold of his whiskey glass; Tintin watches the muscles of his throat working as he gulps down the amber liquid. “Here's to many more, eh, lad?”

“Many more,” Tintin agrees, and the fire burns at his face as he turns to the warmth of it; Snowy makes a small excited noise in his sleep as he chases dream rabbits, and he finds that he is smiling so widely that his cheeks ache. This, this is what home should feel like, perhaps. “You can count on that, Captain.”


End file.
